75 Billion apps to be downloaded by 2014

The worldwide market for leisure and business mobile applications is set to exceed £22 billion by 2014, say analysts IDC. Application downloads are expected to reach 76.9 billion a year, up from 10.9 billion a year today. The apps market is expected to grow at a compound annual rate of 60 per cent.

So far, application developers have written more than 300,000 apps for devices such as the iPhone and Android handsets. App subject matter is mind-blowingly broad, from recipe and cooking hints to software that turns a smartphone into a torch, through to enterprise applications including data capture and job scheduling like WorkMobile.